Where are the non-SDMI MP3 Players?

alen asks: "I'm in the market for an MP3 player. I've been looking at various models and they all seem to be SDMI ready or compliant. Looking at customer reviews on Amazon confirms this as you'll find at least one person saying you can't transfer the music from the MP3 player to your PC. At least on the newer players you do." I've been resisting the urge to get an MP3 player for precisely this reason, opting to use my laptop and a cassette adaptor for those long driving trips, but this is hardly affordable or efficient. Handhelds might work, but memory is a problem here. Are there any players out there that haven't forgotten the "fair" part in "fair-use"?

"So far I have narrowed my search to 3 choices. I want it to sound very good and be able to play music encoded at 128kb or higher.

The Rio Volt 250 is a CD based player so the SDMI thing doesn't really apply. The Creative Labs Nomad II" proudly displays this as a feature. The Samsung Yepp doesn't use SDMI, but something called SecuMax as stated in the Nomad II technical specs on Amazon. And this little tid bit on the Samsung Yepp homepage confirms that SecuMax is just like SDMI.

Now I'm not looking to download any illegal music from the Internet. I simply want to listen to my CD collection on the train to work or while working out. And there is freely downloadable music out there. If I were to download a song at work or a friend's house, put it in my MP3 player I then wouldn't be able to transfer it back to my PC at home to add to my collection. Where is 'fair use' when the artist is giving away their music for free? And I don't have the link, but what of the recent surges in so called 'secure' CD's that one can't rip into MP3's? Where is the 'fair use' there? Or are we supposed to purchase multiple copies of the same music in different formats?"

I like the CD option personally

[night_flyer]

might be a little more bulky, but you dont have to worry about a memeory chip going bad, and you can pack around 150 songs at a higher bitrate on a cd and know what you have in the player.

as for copying "back" to your collection, if its such a big deal to steal the music, borrow the CD and rip it yourself.

The original Rio PMP300 ...

[irq]

The original Rio PMP300 will let you take files out of it, as long as you don't use the software that came with it. If you use the *nix rio tool by the Snowblind Alliance, you can put any file in the rio, and take any file out of the rio, and use it as a generic storage device, albeit not a very good one because SmartMedia is expensive. The limitation on pulling stuff out of it is only in the rio desktop software.

CD based....the way to go....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

If your worried about SDMI, then the CD based ones ar the way to go. CD's fit an INCREDIBLE amount of music on it (most fit more then I would need for the six hour trip down to my parents house.......), they are reliable, cheap and best of all, if you decide to buy a regular CD on the road, just pop it in and your jamming. I plan on getting one soon. I know, they are not as sexy and small as the solid state ones, but you can't beat them right now. to get 650 megs of storage on a small mp3 player is impossible as well as expensive unless someone figures out a way to use or build cheaper chips.

Copying from portable to PC?

[MrSpock]

I've never understood any good scenarios for copying from a portable player to a PC. It seems to me that if you managed to put a song which you own on the portable in the first place, then you have a copy _already_on_ your PC. If you want to move the song from PC to PC, a LAN or even a ZIP disk seems to be far more efficient than using the portable as the transfer mechanism.

Am I missing something obvious?

Fair use is not a right

[ryanvm]

The term "fair use" simply means that you cannot be prosecuted for letting your friend read your book, or copying your CDs to different media and so on. It does not mean that the publishing companies have to make it easy (or even possible) for you to do so.

Basically, "fair use" means you won't get in trouble for a little sharing, but it doesn't mean it'll be easy.

Re:iPod?

[toupsie]

Its no problem if they are your CDs. Steve Jobs actually has the right idea regarding "stealing music". He has said it is not a technology problem but a social one. People who are inclined to steal will no matter what technology you use to prevent it. "Don't Steal Music" sticker on a new iPod is a social message.

P.S. I own an iPod and its worth every penny of its $399 sticker price. It blows my Archos Jukebox 6000 out of the water.

No theft involved.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is technically impossible to use the iPod to steal music: it just copies, and copying is not theft.

What's Wrong With Copy Protection

[Marco Krohn]

I recommend very much the following article from John Gilmore (EFF, inventer of the alt hierarchy): "What's Wrong With Copy Protection".

http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html [toad.com]

The article is well written and he makes some good and interesting points. Worth a read IMHO.

NEO Jukebox/Archos/iPod...

[Bjorn]

Short summary: problems with the Archos but it was nice, like the NEO but not as a walking-around player (using it in the car), the iPod is simply the best MP3 player yet created, by a long, long way (assuming you have a Mac).

Longer version:
I have used all three, and currently own the NEO Jukebox and an iPod (as primarily a Mac user, obviously, although I use Windows PCs at work, usually). None of them are SDMI-impaired.

Archos:
I bought the Archos (6 gig) originally (this summer), and loved the size and form factor (although it was surprisingly heavy). However, the HD frizzed out several times and finally I had to return it after I got sick of the reformat/reload/repeat cycle. If they've fixed some of those problems it probably would be good (and the recorder seems nice). Support was questionable at best - I eventually got responses, but they couldn't do anything about my messed up drive.

NEO Jukebox:
After that I bought the 20 gig NEO Jukebox, and was generally extremely happy with it. It's a little large (about the size of a portable CD player, although thinner than most), but surprisingly light, and the bells and whistles are nice - it comes with a remote control and a nice interface, and replacing the HD is almost as easy as replacing the batteries on any walkman. I actually use it for work a lot to transfer files via USB, since it mounts very easily as a USB hard drive. It pretty much never skips, and looks cool with a nice blue backlight.

The only problems I had with it have been:

1) Slowwwwww transfer rates via USB (transferring even 5 gigs takes around 4 hours, let alone filling the thing - my ripped CD collection is about 2/3 done and is approaching 15 gigs).

2) Lousy battery life - I usually get 4.5 hours max, which means that if I listen to it on el to my current contract, I run out of power by lunchtime.

3) Pain to transport and recharge. During the summer when I was commuting weekly to Texas for a contract, I had to take the large charger every time, which was annoying. It's heavy and bulky. And on a day-by-day basis, there's just no way.

4) Problems mounting in OS X. This may be better in 10.1.1 - I haven't tried it yet.

Support was middling - no response ever when I emailed them, some moderate responsiveness when I phoned.

iPod:
When I first saw the price tag on the iPod, I thought they were n-v-t-s nuts. Then I actually went in and actually looked at one, and I realized I had to have one, and that I can't believe that it is so damn cheap. Salient points:

1) Firewire. This thing loads fully in about 5 minutes. I just say what I want each morning, take a shower, grab it and go after it syncs up.

2) Size. It is *tiny*. Literally the size of a deck of cards. And light. I throw it in my coat pocket on my way to work and forget it's there.

3) Design. The interface is fantastic - even better than the quite good NEO interface. It looks and feels incredible. I don't know anyone (even Mac haters) who hasn't immediately asked "where can I get one?" about three seconds after holding it in their hands.

4) Portability. If you travel at all, this thing blows away every other MP3 player. It's not even close. You need exactly one small cable to recharge and sync, and the iPod itself is so small that it basically is a non-issue.

5) Battery life. This is a big one - I have used the iPod all day for most of the last couple of weeks, and have never even gotten as low as a half charge. It says 10 hours, but I would guess it's more like 15 at normal use.

I have basically nothing negative to say about the iPod.

Basically my plan is to use an FM transmitter to use the NEO in my car, which should be perfect. I'll load it with my whole CD collection overnight about once a month, and otherwise just leave it there.

So there it is. Hope that's of use to someone.

A great alternative to MP3 Players Already Exists

[__aawwih8715]

Its called MiniDisc and its a very mature and developed alternative.

Media for mp3 players is expensive unless you get the optical kind. Media for minidisc is cheap. You can record stuff, batteries last long and the players are as small as mp3 players for the most part. If you get one of the newer sony's you can compress your music further and fit 5 hours on a minidisc. I'm not sure if this is advisable as i've not heard it.

I love my minidisc player as i can't stand listening to the same songs over and over again.

Re: An alternative to MP3 Players Already Exists

[Fionn]

I would never say MiniDisc is bad. Its brilliant.

But wait 'till you come across Sony's (yes, the guys who invented the MiniDisc) NEW CD protection scheme: Besides being not standards compliant in a number of ways, those CDs all have their CopyBit set - and there you are with your grand MiniDisc(tm) recorder, equipped with a now totally useless digital input (unless you decide to spend another ridiculously high amount of bucks on a copy bit stripper).

I wonder how all those hordes of people feel like, who have been tricked into buying this crap by Sony's "digital copy" campaign.

Man I am so glad I havent bought any Sony product for years (since I heard about what their interpretation of artists freedom is).

I would never say MiniDisc is bad. Its brilliant.

Fionn

Re:Ipod! - not so fast there

[ncc74656]

I tried. I have firewire drives on my linux box. The iPod does not work as a disk `out of the box'. When the driver goes to read the `config' page it gets back garbage. Maybe there is a special command to flip the device into disk mode, maybe there is a bug in my linux 1394 stack, but it sure doesn't mount as a disk.

From what I understand, the iPod's HD is formatted with an HFS+ filesystem. This is what currently keeps it from working with anything other than a Mac. If Apple had chosen a more widely-used filesystem (FAT32 would've been adequate for the intended purpose), you would be able to plug into just about any computer with a FireWire port and move files around.

If Linux supported HFS+, it should be possible for it to talk to an iPod. AFAIK, Linux only supports the older HFS. (I'm no expert on Macs, having only a Quadra 610, but I'm guessing that the difference between HFS+ and HFS is a bit more than the difference between FAT16 and FAT32.)

Here's a more general FireWire storage question. I remember reading something about the intelligent nature of FireWire devices; for instance, you're supposed to be able to hook a DV camcorder directly into a hard drive and dump video from tape to disk. What filesystem would be put on the drive to enable it to work in this manner...or is this a capability that isn't implemented in actual devices?

Re:this is a non-issue, afaik

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're willing to allow devices that you purchase to be "SDMI Compliant", than you shall soon not be able to copy an MP3 file from one of the hard drives in your PC to another hard drive in your PC.

It's not an non-issue. Do NOT buy "SDMI Compliant" devices.